"Your Value Doesn't Decrease Based on Someone's Inability to See Your Worth (Anonymous)
TAROT: 10 of Gourds / LENORMAND: Bear, Child, Stork / ADINKRA: Akoma Ntoaso
Just before I put my hands on the keyboard, I got the urge to check on my book baby The Language of Lenormand, which has been out for nearly two months now:
Can you tell that I am grinning from ear to ear? No humblebrag coming from me today (or ever, I hope!) I am thrilled and excited, and so, so proud. Mostly, I am grateful that my book seems to be the friend and guide I intended it to be, and I am grateful for everyone who has said so. Now back to what I originally intended to write here today:
As you can tell from my admittedly unoriginal photos that accompany these posts, I am way more a word person than I am a visual one. That said, I intentionally added a crystal to our cards today, to amplify the message and my process. To the right of the cards is a blue apatite, a writer’s crystal, good for intelligent thinking and self-reflection. Today, I am thinking about my writing, and where I want to go with it, starting in the New Year. I will continue these articles here, because I love the cards and how good they are at holding our hands during challenging times. I began blogging using the cards during the last election cycle, in 2019, when we were also in the midst of the you-know-what epidemic. In the beginning, I wrote articles every single day, until a good friend pointed out the fact that, in terms of readership,
“Ain’t nobody got time for that!”
That is when I scaled down to once a week, and I see no reason to change that frequency. I hope you will continue to read, and feel comforted or challenged, depending on where you are and where the words take you. I am thinking of something else, though, too. The cards will help me illustrate that story:
Today’s Tarot card is the 10 of Gourds (Cups) from Courtney Alexander’s Dust2Onyx Tarot. It is the ultimate card indicating alignment with one’s purpose and with the Divine, Alexander tells us. In this rendition of the card, inspiration in the form of jars full of living waters flow onto and into the minds of receptive souls. With my blue apatite to hand, I am choosing to be faithful to the urge such delightful deluge instills.
Lenormand encourages with Bear, Child, Stork. Bear is a card of plenty and of power, and asks us to own our own. Child bespeaks something new and original, and Stork assures the successful outcome of following a new direction.
I have offered my best gifts to the magickal community in the form of my book and my wonderful deck, The Lenormand of Hope, which makes its way into the wider world in January through www.LaPanthereStudio.com. Now I want to try my hand at a different genre, so I will be starting a second Substack in January exclusively for that new work. I can’t say more about the nature of the work there yet, except to say that my intention is to create writing that is lyrical and lovely and life-affirming in a different way there than I do here.
The Adinkra card in today’s reading is AkomaNtoaso, which is the symbol for “extension of the heart.” It speaks to the concepts of agreement, trust, and partnership, and so another thing that will differentiate that space from this one is that the new Substack content will be available only by paid subscription. I have thought a lot about the concept of “lingua franca,” in so far as it applies to the work of our hands and minds. I love that people love my writing, of course. But the concept of “lingua franca” explains that there is a common language, in terms of how we express thanks and appreciation for what we receive for goods and services, including those goods and services provided us by creatives. As the Hollywood writers and actors argued, art is valuable to us in ways great and small. It entertains, of course, but it does more: it informs, it teaches, it moves us emotionally, creating space for catharsis. And yet, we hesitate to ascribe value to it, the way we do our clothes or our food or our creature comforts. A “thank-you” is always lovely, of course, but it is not what is meant by “lingua franca.” Thanks in “lingua franca” is the kind of thanks I can take to the grocery store, to thank the grocer for my food; to the cable company to thank them for my internet; to the gas station to thank them for the gas in my car. It is the kind of “thank you” all of these entities immediately understand. It makes the world turn. I think often, creatives are encouraged to think of the coin of the realm as “filthy lucre” which should have no place in the rarified air creatives so often breathe in order to produce their art. I wrote for a metaphysical magazine without pay for two years. When I wrote an article discussing the fact that creatives ought to be compensated in that “lingua franca” way, my article was published, but I was never invited to write for them again; not because my writing was not good, but because the publisher knew they could easily find someone else who would be willing to write for free and just be happy to see their name in print. Someone IS making money in that enterprise, may I suggest. Just not the writers. As they say in the vernacular: Nah, pass me with that.”
Pardon the frayed images of my deck prototype, but the extra card I had my artist include in Erika’s Lenormand of Hope makes the case: note the fact that the scale holds daisies on one side and coins on the other, and yet is equally balanced. Perhaps you will want to ponder the why of that. I hope you will.
To write all this and then lose subscribers, or not gain them on the new Substack will not materially move me in any negative direction, so why not make the case anyway? In this Thanksgiving season, may we show our thanks by being good stewards of all the gifts that come our way: the material ones, the spiritual ones, and yes, the creative ones too. I am being a good steward of my gifts by hoping you will join me here always, and over on the new Substack space once it is born. And in this hard, hard season, may we find joy in giving thanks, on Thursday and on each day more that is granted to us.
Amen and Ase
I’ll follow you over there regardless. I enjoy your writing.
I look forward to reading from your new direction on Substack!